


Comprimised

by BlackCatRunning



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Croatoan/Endverse, Angst, Blood, Castiel Whump, Castiel-centric, Coughing, Destiel - Freeform, Fever, Fever Dreams, Hurt Castiel, Hurt/Comfort, Illnesses, Implied Castiel/Dean Winchester, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, It's sort of happy at the end?, M/M, Medication, Narcotics, Nosebleed, Protective Dean Winchester, Sam makes a brief appearance?, Self-Hatred, Sick Castiel, Sickfic, Sneezing, Swearing, This is kind of a grim fic, Unconscious Castiel, Very endverse-y, but not really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-30
Updated: 2015-09-30
Packaged: 2018-04-24 01:54:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4901056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackCatRunning/pseuds/BlackCatRunning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cas isn't really up for a supply run, but he's going anyway. Because it's Dean who's asking. (Implied/light Destiel)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Raid

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: An endverse!Castiel fic for foxonthemoon~
> 
> Also, look out for flagrant mentions of drug abuse, possible alcoholism, and just a kind of glum tone overall. Cas is portrayed with some self-hatred/confidence issues here (and in the next chapter) too, so be wary of that as well.

He loved looking into the bottom of a bottle – pills or alcohol, it didn’t matter. Just as long as there was something inside, something left, because there wasn’t much left anywhere else. Not a lot of people, not a lot of resources, and certainly not a lot of hope. Just whatever crude and carnal pleasures you can cobble together to make it through to another day. Some mornings are easier than others. Today was not one of them.

Cas woke with a heaviness behind his eyes, throbbing with waves of achy pain. That was usual, though he wasn’t sure if it was the Scotch or the Percocet. Or the Valium. Could have been anything, really. He had stopped cataloguing the stings of the human condition and instead did what all humans did eventually – got numb to them. As he sat up on his cot, Castiel felt the shift of pressure in his sinuses and sluggishly pressed a wrist under his nose to keep it from leaking. Runny noses were common side effects of drug use, so it wasn’t the first time he had awoken with one. Even so, he still didn’t have a handkerchief or tissue around. Those were about as rare as toilet paper nowadays.

Shirt it is, he thought, and folded up the edge of his grimy night tee to wipe some of the more prominent moisture from his upper lip. The headache was particularly insistent this morning, so Cas staggered in a groggy haze toward his knapsack for his pill bag. He was probably hungover (or more likely, still drunk) from yesterday, but that was familiar. A couple dry swallows of the good stuff would have him back on the mend. His ears felt a little stopped up too, because he didn’t hear Dean come in until a heavy hand was shaking his shoulder.

“Cas,” Dean was saying. Castiel’s body was easily manipulated by the jostling, body limp like a doll, but it wasn’t doing anything for his head. He felt faintly nauseous, and let his head fall back to meet Dean’s green eyes with his dull, wide blue ones. Cas watched Dean cringe.

“Dude, come on,” he groused. “I thought I taught you years ago how to wipe your nose.”

“Yes,” Castiel agreed, this time using his arm and sniffling deeply. His ears pounded. “I remember how.”

Sighing, Dean realized that Cas wasn’t going to be entirely lucid this early in the morning. But he also knew the ex-angel had been through a lot, struggled heavily with a useless-complex, and would probably have offed himself long ago if Dean hadn’t been there to pull him along. He had done this to Castiel, and the man was his responsibility.

“Clean yourself up,” Dean said, adjusting the holster of his gun on his belt. “Supply run today.”

It took Cas twice as long as usual to get ready, and he even tossed back another pill from an unlabeled bottle already half empty to try and get some mojo going. Not the angel kind of mojo, though. That was impossible. Though if he was going to be of any use out in the hot zone, he had to be awake. He found a swatch of old fabric – probably a shred of one of Dean’s old shirts or something – tucked down into his bag and resolved to use it as a hanky. One swig of something brown and bitter in a bottle by his bed, and Castiel was ready to go.

~~~

After Castiel started drugging and drinking so regularly, people around him stopped asking him if he was okay. He wasn’t sure why, since he hated it when people asked, but he missed the question. It reminded him that everyone still cared if he lived or died, even if it was often unnecessary. Because truly – being sadly honest – no one was okay anymore.

In the back of the jeep, Cas kept his head against the window and his gun in his lap. The usually sharp rumble of the car was dull and whirring in the back of his mind, and his nose still hadn’t stopped running. In annoyance, he had just tucked the coarse cloth against his nostrils as he sat there, letting it leak against it rather than loudly blowing his nose every few minutes. Risa was beside him, pointedly ignoring him, and Dean remained up front alone driving. Castiel must have fallen asleep at some point, because the next thing he knows, Risa’s slapping him awake.

“Castiel,” she growled. The ex-angel shifted uncomfortably, eyes blurring as he tried to focus. Everything was feeling so damn thick all of a sudden, and somewhat hot. Another strong pat to his cheek, and he started. “Get yourself together. Let’s go.”

Castiel, after living through a few years in a human body, understood that he was useless. Hapless. Apt to trip and break something, or ruin a plan. And he suspected that the only reason Dean let him come along on these trips was because the man felt sorry for him. No one else liked him along, he thought. All these thoughts were sterile in his head, feeling disconnected and unimportant. He shoved his make-shift hankie into his pocket.

It was when Cas was reaching for the door handle of the jeep that he felt the curious tingle deep in his sinuses. Castiel remembered his first sneeze – it came immediately after a face full of sawdust in one of the supply closets, and he had panicked. Convulsed with it. Startled himself. And Dean had laughed and explained that it was just a sneeze. It was that memory that reminded him what this was now, and he was helpless to stop it.

His nostrils flared once, irritated and chapped from the crusty fabric of his shirt sleeve, and his lungs juddered with a few pre-mature breaths before he gave into the feeling.

His head snapped down to his chest. It was heavier than the ticklish, healthy expulsion from the sawdust a year ago. This one felt wrenched from him, and his head thundered with pain afterward, ears popping. By now Dean and Risa were waiting for him outside the jeep, so Cas scrubbed his nose on his arms and slipped out. Dean made a face as Cas slammed the door.

“Are you sweating?”

“Probably the alcohol,” Castiel commented offhandedly. Because really, it probably was. Dean sighed again – it was something he did a lot since Sam said yes – and then saddled up his gun and started walking.

They walked in the open for a while, two pairs of eyes searching avidly for threats while the third pair – blue and getting foggier by the minute – struggled to stay open against the agitating feeling of air against them. Castiel felt sleepy, and blamed his swig of liquor that morning, and possibly the pills too. He had sort of forgotten about the supply run, and had meant to be sober for it. No wonder Dean was frustrated; Cas was, once again, useless and making mistakes.

And if that wasn’t enough, the tickle in his nose came back with enough force to stagger him two steps forward. His sneeze was loud, louder than he wanted it to be.

Dean and Risa both jumped and turned, eyes wide from the noise. It was a graveling, grating, smoky sort of sound that ended up echoing down the street. And damned if Cas wasn’t tenting his brows, flicking his nostrils, in want of another. Dean surged forward to stop him, to pinch it off or smother it or something, but wasn’t fast enough. Castiel shook himself like a doll, nearly taking himself to the pavement with the force of it.

 _“Cas, shuddup!”_ It was whispered with the intensity of a thousand bullets, and Castiel belatedly slapped two hands over his nose and mouth, bleary. Those had punched through him out of nowhere, and he wore the swaying expression of a man who had been kicked in the gut without anticipating it.

“Thad was unexpected,” Cas said, expression crumbling into one of discomfort as Dean snatched and hauled him toward an ally to get out of the open. Those sneezes had been devastatingly loud in the dead silence of the torn city. The supply run was already a gamble because there was a Croat hot bed really close to the storefront they needed to get to, so they really didn’t need Cas blowing their cover. It was a get-in, get-out, not a gun-and-run.

“Can you do this?” Dean demanded, staring with the heated glare that Castiel had once wielded pre-Apocalypse. The man felt his skin get a little cold in the ashy air, felt his heart sink toward his stomach. Felt the freezing claws of doubt peel at his mind.

“Of course,” Castiel said, frowning a little. In that somewhat concerned and pitiable expression, Dean could almost see a shadow of what Cas had once been – a confused, inhuman angel. What was in front of him couldn’t even be called a shadow on most days. It was more of a husk.

“Then prove it.” Dean leveled his glare toward the street instead, listening in the weighty silence for a sign that the Croats had heard them before starting forward again with Risa, who cast an angry look at Castiel before slipping into formation behind Dean. The ex-angel felt his arms trembling against the wall where Dean had pushed him, and it took more effort than it should have to get himself moving again.

There were no more altercations because Castiel’s nose behaved, though he got progressively hotter and more unsteady the longer they were out. By the time they were across the road from the storefront, he was blinking hard to see straight. Fuck, this was a bad trip. He shouldn’t have taken that third round of pills.

“—will go in to pick up supplies while Risa keeps look out,” Dean was saying, softly easing his gun out of safety. Again, the green eyes leveled to Cas. They were blind to weakness at the moment – only purpose. Dean had grown hard since 2009, and people who knew him back then struggled to remember who that guy had been. “Ready?”

Castiel nodded, not even sure what he was doing, but prepared to follow Dean’s lead. They crossed the street and slipped into the store together, Dean whispering off the list of things they needed to stuff in their bags. It was going fine, even optimistically, before Cas felt something dry rising in the back of his throat.

His face tightened, jaw clenching; he refused to give in right now. Sure, his hands were trembling, his heart was pounding just as loud and hard as his head was, and he couldn’t stop blinking to clear his vision, but he would be damned if he fell into a coughing fit at a time like this. Still, the need persisted, and he found himself shaking silently with a strangled breath.

Dean perked up from his crouched position by a shelf, stiffening, and then panicking when he saw the scrunch of Cas’s brows and the hard press of his chapped lips. Sweat had plastered his hair to his forehead in some spots. Before Dean could react, Cas threw his head down with coughs. He was helpless to stop them. Cas pressed an open hand against his chest, gasping, dismayed they wouldn’t stop.

They grew louder, hoarse, his lungs irritated by the filth of this abandoned place, and in the distance there was an answering scream of a Croat alerting the pack to their presence. Dean stood up and zipped his bag after stuffing the last of his items in. They had maybe half a minute to get a head start, since that cry had been a little far. He jogged to where Cas kneeled on the dirty tile, face contorted as he continued to cough. Finally, it began to abate.

Cas reached up with an arm to wipe at his running nose, looking woozy and most of all frustrated with himself. He glanced up at Dean with watery blue eyes, bright with what Dean assumed to be something drug-related. “Dean’d, I’b so sorry—”

He didn’t get a chance to finish because Dean heaved him up by his arm, slinging Cas’s bag haphazardly over his other shoulder and ran him out into the grey daylight. Just a block over was the pounding of footsteps. Fuck, that was a lot of Croats. Risa was already motioning them, yelling for them to come on, so Dean let Cas go and started to dash after her. What he wasn’t expecting was Cas to literally go knee-buckling onto the asphalt. Dean made a U-turn.

“Cas, the fuck man?!” For what felt like the millionth time that day, he snatched the guy up by his shirt and pulled him to his feet. “We have to move!” Dean searched his face for anything that would tell him what was wrong. Castiel looked pale and jittery, nose red and chapped from abuse of rubbing with dirty hands and rough fabric. Too runny for just some pill-popping. Whatever, they didn’t have time for this.

Dean kept a stern grip on Cas’s arm as he started to run, urging a stumbling Castiel to hurry the hell up. Another few seconds of struggling, and Dean would have to drop all the bags and carry the guy out, which would ruin the entire operation. Though by some miracle, Dean felt Cas’s strides strengthen behind him, and soon they were both running at a full speed toward the gate, and the car beyond. Once they snuck past the barriers, the military would probably fly in and wipe out the rest.

~~~

They made it. It was enough to convince Dean that maybe God was still around out there somewhere – they definitely should have died back there. He was panting, shoulders aching from the bags of goods, but it felt good to be alive. Risa wore a similar smile of triumph, looking over at him occasionally with fetching looks. A good chase always got them a little excited. It was the dull thud behind them that made their grins falter, and Dean glanced back. His stomach pinched.

“Cas?” The man was on all fours, having just pushed himself up from a dead-weight tumble. He was breathing much harder than he should have been. Castiel wasn’t an Olympic runner, but he had stayed alive this long and was capable of physically defending himself. This wasn’t like him, even with pills and alcohol fluttering through his veins.

“I’b okay,” Castiel muttered, but his tone was automatic. The kinds of things Castiel says when he needs something to say, even if he’s not thinking straight. The kinds of things he says at his most high, his heavily smashed. “Tripped.”

Clumsiness wasn’t unusual with Cas, but congestion and keeling over was. The guy wasn’t making efforts to get back up again. Dean went to his side grimly, worried but no longer soft enough to show it, and slapped a hand over Castiel’s damp forehead with enough force to push the man’s gaze upward. Fuck.

“He’s burning up,” Dean announced, more to himself than to anyone else. Castiel was his responsibility, his fault if he wanted to put it darkly, and look what had become of him. Getting sick after the end of the world wasn’t advisable, and if it was something serious they might be screwed. Dean lowered his hand, settling Cas with a firm stare. “Why didn’t you say something?”

Cas shook his head, still trying to catch his breath. “I didn’d realize id, I-…” He broke off sharply to sneeze.

Dean jerked back before they could spray him, realizing just how little experience Cas still had with human manners and customs. A couple coughs from irritated lungs came after, and Castiel tried to sniffle through clogged, swollen sinuses. To Dean, it looked like a nasty headcold that might just be exacerbated by physical exertion and alcohol. He hoped, anyway. Fevers were never good when the camp was struggling with antibiotic supplies. Castiel’s face twitched with another approaching sneeze, but it didn’t seem to come.

“We should get him back,” Risa said, her voice not terribly cold but still clinical. It wasn’t good to stay out in the open for long after a raid, since Croats weren’t the only thing to worry about. Dean nodded and went around Cas, lifting him up by the armpits from behind. A moment later, he was glad he did. Cas’s back expanded with a sudden, quick breath, and Dean got a nose-full of his sweaty hair as Castiel’s head tipped back. Then his whole body seized with another sneeze. The trailing sound of relief at the end told Dean he had been needing that for a while, and somehow the hunter couldn’t keep from smiling.

“Come on, buddy,” he said softly, enough so that Risa didn’t hear. “Let’s get you home.”


	2. The Ride Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry if this one is a little gross/intense for some people ^^’’.. Take note of the warnings before you read, my dears~! Also, the Destiel is more heavily implied in this chapter too.

Getting in the car wasn’t the hard part. It was easy as pie (which Castiel was sure Dean missed dearly, by the way… or maybe he did once. It had been a long time). They tossed him in the backseat, loaded the trunk with supplies, floored the gas, and away they went. Castiel willed himself not to say a word, even though the speed Dean was taking turns made his stomach split in two. It was necessary, lest a stray Croat get in their way.

Castiel flinched with a sneeze, trying to keep it at one and one only. Green eyes peeped at him from the rearview mirror, but only for a moment.

“Bless ya,” Dean said.

Risa sat up front this time, absolutely uninterested in catching whatever Cas had managed to pick up. He didn’t blame her, of course, and hadn’t expected anything less from the pragmatic second-in-command. Bottom rung is what he was. Choices weren’t his to make anymore, and perhaps that was best. He tended to make bad ones when he was given the chance. Ask anybody.

Lying lateral on the back seat, legs squished and scalp bumping the edge of the driver-side door in a way that made his headache both worse and better, Castiel allowed himself to wander. With the same patient method of analysis he had possessed as an angel, he catalogued his current condition. Achy body, pounding temples, dry eyes, fire and ice, an ooze of snot slowly sliding out of his nose. With thick, clumsy fingers, Castiel rubbed at the wetness. Looked at his hand.

Oh. It wasn’t snot. It was blood.

Finally, after what seemed a lifetime, the drugs from that morning were booting up. They weren’t anything serious – at least as far as Cas could recall. He wondered why they had taken so long to rush him, but it didn’t matter. He’d rather have them now than earlier, when he needed lucidity. With any luck, he could pass out back here and no one would be the wiser.

Just as his eyes began to drift, feeling the comforting buzz of a drugged sleep gently dangling, the blood in his nose trickled a little too close to the nerves. The reaction was knee-jerk, and what came from it was a wet, stunted sound.

The whispery, wet sneeze from the back made Dean jump, and he canted his eyes to the rearview mirror to give his homeless-smelling derelict of a BFF another look-see. His small gasp of air alerted Risa, who had been staring resolutely forward since they started the drive.

She glanced over her shoulder at the back, feeling her spine get chilly. Castiel had sneezed what looked like a quart of blood all over the place, and there was still a foreboding trickle leaking from one of his nostrils. His gaze was blinky, struggling. Dean didn’t stop driving, but he did speak in a tense grunt.

“Cas?”

Castiel was caught between a rock and a hard place, trying to keep both the car and his body as clean as possible. It wasn’t going well. It looked like someone had capped a thumb over a spout of blood, so that it sprayed and spluttered everywhere. And honestly, that’s what had happened. And what was going to happen again.

Dean’s eyes widened as the man hitched another quick breath, desperate to sneeze and desperate to not. Before anyone could make a move to do anything, Castiel bucked with another. Risa screamed in reflex as it sent a firework show of body fluid through the backseat. Castiel knew that just about everyone suspected he had an abominable blood-borne illness, what with all the orgies he partook in (which wasn’t that many, to be fair). So having a wave of his blood crash through an enclosed space was understandably alarming.

Dean refused to hit the breaks, and instead just held down the gas. They didn’t have time to stop, and wouldn’t any time soon. Of course, that didn’t mean he was happy with the situation. Castiel could feel the glare on the back of his neck while he tried to clean up. He felt a little shivery, and goosebumps rose up on his arms.

It’s just that everything he could use to clean with was already dirty. He coughed miserably, his chest feeling tight.

Risa hissed, hunching forward. Her words were hard to hear, but it was something like, _germ geyser_ and there was the _f-word_ in there somewhere. Maybe more than once. Castiel wouldn’t put it past her.

“Cas!” Dean barked, eyes not moving from the road. “Cut it _out._ ”

Dean’s voice sounded a little strange to Castiel’s ears, which were still firmly attached to his head. The ex-angel put a bloody hand to his left one, just to check. Sounds were coming at him from all directions. Tripping on narcotics with a fever probably wasn’t advisable, he thought distantly, as if his head was floating away.

Yes, not such a good idea. Big surprise. None of his ideas were that good.

Castiel used his palms to rub away blood from his face, and sniffled back the rest. Swallowing made him want to gag, but the sensation was so far from him, he could ignore it. His fingers were tingling, body starting to vibrate in a way it hadn’t before. Coherent thought, he observed-… difficult.

He blinked, and suddenly there was a ghostly pale Sam sitting in the passenger seat, and Castiel thought he was an angel again. Dark, melting walls of the Impala around him. Flames everywhere. But it was cold. So cold.

 _He’s useless, Dean,_ Sam was saying. The words came to Castiel rippled, distant. From another time. _He’s useless, Dean._

 _But I’m not, Sam,_ Castiel thought, parsing through the haze as Sam turned to look at him.

 _Just stop talking,_ he said, with that smile that Castiel remembered from a world long gone. It wasn’t fond; it wasn’t cruel. He missed Sam. He missed the Dean that had left with Sam.

 _Cas?_ the old Dean asked.

No, Castiel wouldn’t look at him. No one could spare tears nowadays because clean water was scarce, bodies were fragile. With the energy it would take to cry, Castiel could lift and transport a bag of supplies.

_Cas?_

_Leave me_ , Castiel felt himself say. His lips were numbing. _Don’t make me remember you. Don’t make me miss you._

_Cas?_

~ ~ ~

Dean grit his teeth, blinking hard, eyes tired of the road. It wasn’t that long of a drive, but the miles were minutes he didn’t want to spend here. Castiel had a fever from hell, the kiddies back at camp all wanted their supplies, and there was so much to do today he couldn’t keep track of it all-

Castiel mumbled something in the back, and Dean huffed, trying not to smile. This was not a smiling matter. But thinking of Castiel asleep gave him a mental image he both liked and loathed. It always reminded him of the first time, with Castiel slumped in the back of the Impala, exhausted with a fatigue he had yet to understand. It was beautiful and sad and Dean tried not to think about it.

“Cas?”

After the sneezing-blood episode – which seemed to be just a nosebleed and nothing too serious – Cas had settled down and started dozing in the back. Probably best, with that fever of his. Since then, he had been patiently saying his name, again and again, seeing what Castiel would say in return. Dean hadn’t pegged his best friend for a sleep-talker, but over the years he had learned the ex-angel would chat nonsensically once in a while in response to stimuli. Dream-walking, dream-talking. Still an angel in the most human of ways.

Dean sighed.

Risa rubbed her face with both hands, looking over her shoulder at-

“Castiel!”

Dean jumped. No one had used the full title in a long while, and if someone was throwing it around, it meant business. He turned, and something cold slipped down the back of his throat and dove headlong into this stomach.

Cas was not asleep; Cas was quite literally Mr. Comatose.

The car jerked a little, swerving, as Dean panicked. He couldn’t let up from the gas and pull over – not when they were this close to clearing the badlands and making it to Camp. But if Castiel was fucking ODing in the back seat, eyes wide, blood dripping and chest still, Dean wasn’t about to turn a blind eye.

“Risa,” he said, and that was all she needed apparently. Despite what reservations she had before, Risa climbed out of the passenger seat and into the back, her jaw set. Dean tried not to seethe that it was her checking Cas’s pulse, _her_ looking into Castiel’s eye to observe the size of his pupils. _Her_ taking care of _his_ … his Cas.

“Well?” he barked eventually, trying to keep his eyes on the road.

“Keep driving,” Risa said. And that was all she would say.

~ ~ ~

It was unspoken knowledge that Castiel was valuable. He was Dean’s last real connection to what had been. Chuck served a similar purpose, sure, and Bobby had too for a while. But everyone knew Castiel was different. He was Dean’s exception to almost everything. Mistakes that would get any other team member stripped of rank and tossed out for the Croats to eat just rolled off Cas. A couple people joked that when he lost his angelhood, he got a layer of Teflon.

The entire Camp knew it, though no one ever commented. They knew better than that. Dean would start crotch-punching people the moment someone suggested he had even the slightest soft-spot for Castiel. Though they did find it painfully ironic that Castiel seemed to think so lowly of himself most of the time. It takes a serious level of self-hatred to do what he did every day. If only he knew what they knew. Could see what they saw.

So when Dean’s jeep screeched to a stop by the lot much more violently than usual, and Risa leapt out of the back seat looking perfectly fine, everyone in the area held their breath. Dean clawed his way out of the jeep just as Risa began to ease out Castiel’s limp, bloody body with hands hooked around his chest. Dean surged her like a possessive animal, and she stepped back immediately.

Chuck, the first brave enough to approach the situation, edged his way up to Dean as the man arranged Castiel like a bride. The smaller man was pale, shivery, with blood streaked beneath his nose, over his lips, and all over his front. Chuck swallowed.

“…is he…?”

Dean shouldered by the prophet, refusing to comment. Risa stepped forward to shake her head at the curious faces, and everyone relaxed just a little. Castiel wasn’t dead, and that meant Dean was still okay. Because the moment that wiry, wry little drug-addict kicked the can, it was over. All of it.

But that didn’t mean Dean was currently in a good mood. No, he was pissed. Quite pissed, in fact. Castiel’s body was light, rough, angular, just like always. But it was also uncomfortably warm against his chest, radiating fever. How had Castiel gotten this bad right under his nose? Dean was usually the first one to notice when the man was catching a cold. This one had come out of nowhere, which made him nervous.

He and Risa determined back in the jeep that Castiel had not overdosed, but the fever wasn’t helping. Judging by the nosebleed, whatever shit-cocktail Cas took that morning had come over him in the car. Dean wasn’t happy with it at all, but he was grateful it hadn’t hit Cas in the middle of the supply run itself. They might not have made it out.

As Dean approached the screen door to Cas’s cabin, the man started to stir. Hurrying to his mat (because Castiel had never liked beds, for whatever reason), Dean placed him carefully on the ratty blankets and kept a cool hand over his burning forehead.

Castiel didn’t open his eyes, but his blood-crusted lips turned up into a smirk. “Hello, Dean.”

“Don’t you ‘Hello, Dean’ me, you dick,” Dean snarled. His thumb smoothed carefully near the short hair at Castiel’s temple, betraying his tone. Dean was more relieved than angry. He still marveled at the fact Castiel could tell it was him even without looking, every time. “Are you insane?”

“As opposed to…?” Castiel asked, his eyes finally cracking open. They were mirthful, though there was residual pain lingering there. It made Dean sigh.

“You could’ve died back there.”

“No great loss, I’m sure.”

Dean’s hand left Castiel’s head and instead snatched the front of his shirt, yanking him up from the floor with a growl. “Don’t _say that shit_.”

Castiel stared at him impassively, no longer smiling.

It was a terrible cycle. A man who didn’t want to love, and a man who thought he wasn’t worthy of it, both needing it desperately. Neither of them could seem to say the right things to one another; after the apocalypse, saying the unsaid was both very important and very impossible. The two of them bore into one another’s eyes, and for a second it felt like old times.

Then Castiel began to cough. They came fast and hard, and more than that, they sounded too deep in his chest to be anything mild. Dean didn’t like how dizzy Castiel seemed afterward, and he put a hand on his shoulder to steady him.

“Easy, bud," Dean said, easing Castiel back onto the floor and settling a hand over his hot chest. He was so overwhelmed he wasn’t sure where to begin, but Cas kept giving him that somber, doe-eyed look of trust that he had been giving him for years. It was hard to stay mad at him.

“Can I get a status update, at least?” he asked. Castiel knew what he meant without asking for clarification, and began to softly list his symptoms as Dean rummaged in their first aid kit. There was a variety of supplies thanks to their run today.

“Headache, elevated temberature, sore throad, condgestion, aches, coughing…”

“Nausea?”

“Dot really.”

“Anything else?”

Castiel shook his head and paused to sniffle, but got nowhere. With a clumsiness that came from fever and fatigue, he put a wrist below his nose to stem the trickling tide.

Dean sighed again, this one heavier than the last. His hands stilled in the kit when he felt Castiel place bloody fingers over his wrist, a feather-light touch like the flutter of a butterfly wing. And somehow, with no words at all, told Dean everything would be okay.

_~suddenly, fin_


End file.
